China’s cratering markets drive mainstay retail investors away

Small investors’ decisions mirror those of big foreign institutions, which have pulled back from China’s markets for months. Reuters

SMALL Chinese investors are scrambling even harder than foreigners to exit the country’s crumbling stock markets, sending premiums on global index funds skyrocketing as they search for exposure to anything but the sputtering domestic economy.

“The logic is simple: stay away from all yuan assets,” says Rain Yang, a retail investor in southern Jiangxi province, who spent last year selling everything but his apartment in order to fund purchases of US stocks, gold and cryptocurrencies.